| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 110291 | 2010-06-10 22:32:00 | Best External Hard drive for back up | kfoffice (9242) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1108953 | 2010-06-10 22:32:00 | Hi everyone, I've had some very helpful feedbacks in the past on this forum concerning fixing computer related problems and or giving helpful hints for improving computer performance etc. I hope someone may help me, point me to the right direction. I'm after a good external hard drive to back up my laptop and one harddrive on my main computer. My laptop is using Vista Home Premium and main computer on Windows XP Professional. Perhaps a 1.5TB external hard drive or bigger since my main computer harddrive is 1TB and laptop is an 120GB. Many thanks. |
kfoffice (9242) | ||
| 1108954 | 2010-06-10 22:39:00 | 1.5TB IMO would make sense for those 2. You may wanna consider eSATA support for the PC that also supports USB2 for the lappie. Depends how you wanna backup. You want a image of your hard drives and or do you want to just backup your own personal files? What I do is split my PC HD into 2 pieces, system and data files. I find that easier. I have a image of the system drive and I copy (sync) my personal files. This way it saves me the hassle of reinstalling all my software. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1108955 | 2010-06-10 22:45:00 | For the lappie, I have a spare HD so easier for me, I find backing up a lappie easier with a portable external HD (2.5") b/c some of them may not require a power cable. | Nomad (952) | ||
| 1108956 | 2010-06-10 23:20:00 | Thanks Normad, I wish I can do that split thing for my PC hard-drive to speparate the system and program files from the rest but I don't know how to . That will be the ultimate as you said . I can partition my main hard-drive using Norton Partition utility CD I bought two years ago . But how much work does it involve to loading system and program files into one of the partitions? Will the computer tell me that I'm reloading them all, and what should I do then? I have two harddrives in my PC which are both sata drives . The main / bigger one is 1TB . |
kfoffice (9242) | ||
| 1108957 | 2010-06-10 23:27:00 | I'm just re-reading your posts. For the laptop, at this stage I just want to backup my personal files (I think Vista calls it Documents). My Compaq / HP laptop came already partitioned with the system files & programs in a small partition (D:) and the main one for everything else (C:) |
kfoffice (9242) | ||
| 1108958 | 2010-06-10 23:46:00 | If you have 2 HDs what you could do is just pop the data files onto the 2nd SATA drive and scrap the repartitioning .... If you are saving the files through your profile, you can right click My Documents, My Pictures etc etc .. and redirect the folder path to your 2nd HD for eg. I dunno about the partition software, never used that before. Generally when you use those type of software it might be a 20min job I guess, restart computer and it just works and you get into Windows and you see the extra partition there if not, right click My Computer - Manage and allocate it and format it for use. If you wanna redo, basically means to format and get Windows Setup to specify the size you want install it, and install all other software and reconfigure them etc etc. I find that I install the other software when I need them so at the beginning I might install a few but overtime I install more when required. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1108959 | 2010-06-10 23:54:00 | I don't separate the OS and program files. They are together on mine. I just separate my data files. OS/proggies to me is just that - something I don't touch and have a image file of. Then I have my personal files. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1108960 | 2010-06-11 01:03:00 | Perhaps a 1.5TB external hard drive or bigger since my main computer harddrive is 1TB and laptop is an 120GB. Many thanks. But is it full? And remember you are backing up data not the entire thing. And if you are backing up the entire thing, you'd make an image which isn't as big. Stick with Seagate or Western Digital. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1108961 | 2010-06-11 03:46:00 | Thanks Normad, I wish I can do that split thing for my PC hard-drive to speparate the system and program files from the rest but I don't know how to . That will be the ultimate as you said . I can partition my main hard-drive using Norton Partition utility CD I bought two years ago . But how much work does it involve to loading system and program files into one of the partitions? Will the computer tell me that I'm reloading them all, and what should I do then? I have two harddrives in my PC which are both sata drives . The main / bigger one is 1TB . I've never partitioned a Hard Disk before, but have just been matching a pair of 160GB disks and had to bite the bullet . I downloaded a freeware program called Partition Assistant, and it was a piece of doddle! |
GrahamB (750) | ||
| 1108962 | 2010-06-11 05:05:00 | What do you mean by "data files"? Where do I find them on my computer? | kfoffice (9242) | ||
| 1 2 3 | |||||